Which said enough.
“I’ll take that as a no. What gives?”
In his usual fashion, he didn’t give me the answer I wanted. “Your name is Wayland Keeney. Age forty-eight years old. You were a miner born and raised here in Randolph County, West Virginia. There’s a bathroom and a mirror, even in this small space.” Church gestured to one corner, where an open doorway stood. “You might want to clean up before getting to the case. It won’t be as straightforward as some of your others.”
I eyed him askance. None of my cases could ever be consideredstraightforward, and Church wasn’t exactlyEncyclopaedia Britannicawhen I needed him. Though he’d given me a bit more than he usually did. Something I made note of. “Do I want to know why you’ve already told me the details you have? You’re usually more reserved about this stuff.”
One corner of his mouth twitched. “This case is problematic in a few ways, and I’m giving you what I can, Vincent. I trust it will be enough.” He turned halfway toward the altar at his back, retrieving a pair of leather-bound journals. There was no ceremony as he presented them to me, dumping them into my open hands.
One was a collection of all the monsters and myths I’d come across in my research or on the job. As close to a manual on dealing with the supernatural as I could have. The other served as a recording of all my case files, mostly for my fragmented memory.
I stuffed them into my waistband, taking a step in the direction of the bathroom. Then something he’d said struck me. I rounded on him, opening my mouth as I did. “What’s problematic—”
The church stood empty but for me. No sound. Nothing to betray that he had left. Just the sort of quiet in a small building when you’re all alone.
I might have grumbled a string of curses about problematic paranormal investigator handlers who vanish on a whim.
The bathroom consisted of a toilet that looked like it came from a gas station, though it had been regularly cleaned, and a sink with a mirror over the top. A quick look at myself revealed a not-so-pretty picture.
Wayland wore every bit of his years and tough labor in his face. Creased like old leather and caked in all the grit a miner would be. Yet the brown of his eyes and natural set of his face spoke of something gentle beneath the hardness. Something that edged on fatherly kindness. The sort of guy who could kick your ass and would probably buy you a drink after.
I washed up and headed outside to the truck.
The world cut out, and I watched a short scene of Wayland’s hands wrenching free the cigarette lighter and slipping something into the space. Then he did something with the glove box that happened too smoothly and quickly for me to catch.
At least the vision settled whom the truck belonged to.
I stopped a few feet from it, sighing as I took it in. An old 80s F-250 in what I assumed was supposed to be something resembling the old two-tone style they’d come in. But that works only when you genuinely have a pair of colors. Not ten of the damn things.
The old truck looked like it’d survived a tour in the Middle East and had been cobbled together from the parts of similar survivors, and either a point of honor or likely cost kept Wayland from respraying the other panels to match what I guessed was the original color.
Whatever that was.
Vanilla crime investigators in television shows usually get coolcars, but as a rule, paranormal investigators often don’t. Still, you have to be practically a wizard of bad luck to drive around in a beat-up relic with not a single matching body panel, color wise.
I opened the driver’s side door, mildly relieved it’d been left unlocked. Then I went about re-creating what I’d seen in Wayland’s memory. Removing the cigarette lighter revealed a compartment he’d fashioned to dump his keys in. And something similar in the glove box and under the armrest latch.
That told me Wayland made a habit of this and, given that I’d found his wallet stashed in the glove compartment, that he didn’t feel comfortable taking it out of the truck before he met with his death.
It also meant that Wayland had possibly been concerned about needing to hide his identifying materials before he died, which prompted the obvious question: Why?
I didn’t have an answer then, but I was certain of one thing: there was a good chance I wouldn’t like it when I discovered it. There are seldom good answers in this line of work.
The old truck rumbled to life once I’d started her up and went into gear easy enough. Flipping through Wayland’s wallet got me to his license, which gave me his address. Not much good on its own as the man didn’t seem to have a cell phone, or a vehicle with GPS. So I ambled onto the only road in sight and took one of the only two turns available to me.
It wasn’t long before the small mercy of visions from the guy struck. A familiar bend in the street, and memories of coming down the other way. The images threaded into a montage I recognized from a routine buried deep within Wayland. One I reversed to lead me to a small house just outside of town.
Wayland’s place looked like it had been one of many built inthe sixties in the pop-up manner to accommodate the population boom the country had experienced as well as returning veterans from the Korean War. A small single-story rambler with pale yellow siding and a single carport.
I parked the truck and thumbed through the few keys in his possession, trying each one until I’d successfully unlocked his front door. “Anyone home?” I kept my voice level as I made the call, figuring one of two things: Anyone who might have been missing Wayland would come to greet him, which would tell me something. Or if there was any sort of trouble lingering, they’d do the same.
Only, there was no answer.
The inside of his home spoke of an old bachelor. Well-used furniture and zero sense of coordination. Everything had been chosen for comfort, and perhaps affordability. Letters lay out in stacks along the small kitchen table, as did a few plastic binders.
I started a slow and thorough search of Wayland’s home, making sure I made as little noise as possible in the rare event that something was lurking and had decided to ignore my earlier call.
Mercifully, nothing nasty turned up during my investigation. Though the same could be said for finding anything useful.
